


The Dreams of Dust

by CravenWyvern



Series: DS Extras [7]
Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Eldritch, Experimental Style, Gen, Severe AU, THEY are kind of terrifying, Unreliable Narrator, Way Too Many Adjectives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 06:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10551282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CravenWyvern/pseuds/CravenWyvern
Summary: And how long can you go in eternal darkness?And how long can They wait?And how long before you're empty of everything?And how long can a Throne go without a King?How long before you're less and greater than Them?How long until They notice?





	

Wilson woke up.

The air around him was stagnant, solid, dust thick and smelled heavily of the thick greasy hair from the spiders, and taking a breath from it choked him, made him hack and cough, eyes watering and burning as the dream roiled in his head, still a steady boil in his skull. The darkness was light, waned, a blue hint passing through the silk walls of the tent, something large and round and fat hanging above him and lightening the mesa he was camping upon. Somewhere, farther off, the sound of waves breaking on a cliff face hissed, low mumbled crashes just barely echoing around him, just barely pushing through the tents thick fabric. And somewhere, closer and yet even further away, was a constant drone, a static whisper only he could hear, even as its metal body lay in the abyssal bottom of the oceans surrounding this place. After a moment, sucking in dusty air and rubbing at his eyes, Wilson shook his head, tried to shake the throbbing away, the clinging fingers of dream away even as it latched and leeched.

Peeling the spider silk blankets back, feeling nauseous as the strands pulled and tugged, sticky webbing way too close to his skin and clinging to his clothing, Wilson sat himself up and pushed open the tents door, the flap swinging away with ease, the blue aura outside blinding him, bright spots and waves flaring in his vision. For a moment his claws brushed the stack of torches on the outside, almost grabbed the miners hat that sat next to them, but as he blinked out and adjusted himself to the full moon's brilliance Wilson ignored the tools and crawled out of the tent, kneeled down and rubbed at his still burning, dry scratched eyes. It was bright enough, shadows chased by the cool mixed colors and the flattened landscape was spread around him clearly, a dulled blue hinting of dirt and rock and twisted trees that dropped into rough hewed cliffs and spiked falls, a vast nothing of coagulated liquid that rose and wobbled in mock waves and crashes on the edges of the world. Behind him, following the marbled path back, was a smattering of his own false visionary world, trees from another plane, far above this last one, planted carefully and spider nests gathered from queens and overcrowded dens far away spread about in sticky clumps of blind abominations and mass webbed strings, stuttered growing, stunted bushes and grasses in neat rows of semi undeath, slow rotting from the severe lack of light, and the mechanical machines of someone else's hands but his own design rose in clusters, random and uneven, chests filled with everything he could gather in this place, overstuffed and packed wooden boxes he had only the energy to throw things into, disorganized masses of resources. Slowly but surely, he was changing this reality, trying to push and pull, mold it the way he saw fit.

As he stood up, raising his eyes to the bloated moon above him, hand going to his forehead for a moment of an anchor against the aches chill, the static of the dream still persisting and dragging in his consciousness, some thick slimed thing that felt like a muffled foil over his eyes and in his ears, Wilson breathed in the scent of stagnant air, tinged with the new growth he was encouraging behind him. It smelled of more rot than true life, but even fungus and mold breathed here and it was better than the twisted shells of hollow trees and bone white bracken that clung to the dust and sand with brittle roots, the life in them all but extinguished.

Another breath, the heavy perfume of age and rot and blackened slime, the thicker salted feel on his tongue that rose in clouded fogs from the surrounding liquid abysses, and Wilson had to squint his eyes against the blue light, the semi darkness a mass of mist hanging above him, dribbling with strands that pooled in half solidified gutters, shadows cast by rising inanimate figures as the moons glow pulled in a slow arc across the sky. If he looked behind him, cast a glance over the cracked marble that centered under his feet, Wilson would see no shadow. It had disintegrated in the very beginning, the instant he had been dethroned, forcefully expelled and ejected from the blackened thing that clung so desperately to its strained earth, the lavender fabric rippling under its disjointed hands and marble cracking in split slabs as its steady refusal throbbed in the heartbeat of this plane.

The dizziness of the leftover dream still rode before him, faded wisps of it gathering in the edges of his vision, and the heavy mucus that weighed down on his shoulders in thick ropes was withering, biting things tangled in his back. Wilson rolled his shoulders, stretched and rode the twinge of pain that centered in the middle of his spine and rested heavily on his neck, feeling the creak and crack of bone sliding into place only to push out again, the consequences for sleeping in such disappointing accommodations and in such desperately made sheets settling in with an apathetic ease. 

Even with the fake moons light, even with the cooler air and less shady, claustrophobic walls of the tent, the strands of sleep carried on, swerved over his skin in globes of memory and nightmare. A night terror, perhaps, because it was carrying still, it was still there, that big bubble of blue and white and grey swathed in heaved masses over his head, encased and blocked off. The full moon was bright, but the crawling tendrils in his eyes, the pulsing burn that made him blink too fast, not feel right and waver as nausea kicked in, made the dream more real, more breathed into and out of. The leaning was off, vision blurred in static bulbs before his balance kicked back together, jerking himself upright and feeling the slides of his own brain try to meld together again, a barrier of blankness layered and quelling his thoughts in a muffled hide, a stillness barely brushing over him as the world slowly tilted and turned.

The nightmare was there, in the forefront, and it was general unease, sudden interrupting pulse of paranoia and fear, that second skin touch and how for the moments before and after Wilson was a few inches away from himself, numbed in the wrong pinpoint with distant cold fingertips. The dream had a hold on him, half remembrances, and the flash of teeth was met with something like resistance and Wilson felt the world waver, hunching forward with arms crossing his chest and holding himself, blinking open his eyes as a stage of sleep sloughed off, the world turning ever so slowly to its side before he righted it. His balance was more than shot, the realization mixing unevenly with the dream and the remembering and those teeth, hideous teeth twisted in his fingers with gouts of curled slime and slick and much too thin and much too warm muck, and for a moment the dream had a hold of him and the world swayed and almost dropped but then his eyes righted themselves and he felt his knees tremble, the locking and disorientation wavering out the blue tinted world, silence besides slow rot death and the crashing gelatin farther out, low hum of stifled speakers under the weight of blackened mold.

Sliding down to his knees, a stifled nothingness barring him from the hulking thoughts just thinning over his skull, the lightened darkness before him a vortex of nothing but unseen mist to cover its scrabbling seat, Wilson locked his eyes downwards, ignored the shifting behind him, above him, a great wormed thing that blinked white globed paint at him from above leaning heavily, leaning a thick skinned, slick vest over his back, sliding gloved tendrils and exploring withers of things that tugged half heartedly at his hair.

Even under the moons smooth pond light it manifested, heavy weight on his back and limbs crossed of tar and muck, tall thing it was that dribbled over him, the darkened stains splattered onto marble and holding of globs of slime, jelly that rolled off his shoulders in thick globule sheets. Its eyes could not spread in the ocean light, could not swirl in milky drains around him in hollowed darkness, could not look at him, into him and peel back like it did in the void abyss of night and whispers, but the thickened, curling dream was a calling thing, a pleading thing and even as the shades half remembered from sleep pushed and pulled in the corners, burning as he closed his eyes and yet saw the mass behind him, it fed the coagulated infected nest in deep strands that glimmered with faded stars and dead galaxies, inched along with slow precision and dragging nails that just barely pushed past the bleach barrier matted over his thoughts.

The shocks as it pushed, cracked through into him as Wilson realized exactly what was happening was needle thin and he lurched to his feet, stumbled and swung around to look, to see it-

The nothing silence hung deep, low hum behind him as the air seemed to clear. The dream hung as a fog, but the crystal of it smeared into painted mist and the blue moon was laden heavily, dripping white lard into the air with every breath, a perfume of mud and buzzing infected rot, crawling slabs of mold, but the tar melted mass behind him was no longer, slipping into a mire of streaked gushing stains, the barren galaxy eyes having melded into fine dust even as it watched him, breathed steadily with a heartbeat pumping behind him and deep in the shallow black earth.

There were tremors, embedded vibrations in his limbs and thick ropes as his limbs shook and his chest felt strung up, sloughed open and peeled and hitched in open air, but yet the blanket of muffled blankness was a stilled bubble around him, those pinpricks of shock and hysteria only siphoning in misted clouds all too slowly, filling his hollow chest and yet blocked in solid mass blocks from his thoughts. Feeling the thick of it but yet not feeling it all just yet, wavering on his feet and trembling with slick shades eating away his spine, Wilson held his head in his hands, feeling the shiver and thrum of the bloated heart behind him, calling and calling and calling, but the memory of rejection was complete hesitation.

The bone and flesh dust left over was still and frozen, monumental of someone else, presence all but gone and disappeared, the marbled statues arrested and crumbled into nothing of remembrance, but the zigging red hate and anger quelled and misted into nothing from memory, because time passed wrong and twisted wrong and the thing behind him that pleaded and wailed, called the mass infected nests to it and yet rejected him, dented the static born rod and machine while pressing and tugging him out of the seat was of a wanting and begging for another, not ready to give up yet. This had no matter to him, not anymore, and it was only the cliff face out and away, taunting him as the quagmire of slime and drool quivered out in waves and slick membranes, promising darkness and yet fear clung thickly to his bones, the cream eyes of darkness watching, wishful waiting as They roamed, siphoning in strands and strings everything from his core.

The Nightmare Throne called, loud hissing wails and screams, tugging his brain and yet it was repulsed, displeased and spitting with every attempt he made on taking it, a formal place of elsewhere and who ever which held no board now, it's King long dead. It expelled him when he tried, the fewer and fewer options draining as the boredom set in, as the mares grew thicker and heavier, as They drained him and clung as if starved, leaving him empty and unreplaced, a fuel They craved beyond measure and thus nothing he did staved Them off, not even the disgraceful soapy moon's light driving them away into sloped hills and valleys of hewn stone and wasted land.

The dreams clung like cobweb, dry heaved strands that made the teeth of the land, repeats and loops and all wrong, something other and remembered and done but yet not, not by him but by him from elsewhere, and the active memories twitched his insides and fed Them too easily, drained his light and it was an effort to get up and wake now, everything lost and gone.

With the throbbing tar of slime away from him, peeled away with moonshine and direct sight, the clarity of it ached deeply, shivering in his bones as Wilson grinded his teeth painfully and tried to straighten up. Burning nausea roiled in his gut, the spears of heated vines in his eyes easing as he blinked the fog away and shook his head, greased hair heavy and matted in tangles and knots, rubbing over the spiked stubble on his face with careful claws. The dream hung about but its opal surface became transparent, glowed with the moons sickly light and for now, Wilson could see.

The aching call of the Throne echoed, rung in his ears along with the mournful bellows of the key deep below the waves, and Wilson looked about, the blaring clarity of blue light shocking and blindingly flat. He could see, all of it, the forests of his own work stretched back, withered things dying so, so slowly, the production he had relied so heavily upon flagging and the spider nests, the desolate, abandoned nests…

How long as he been here then, and how many times has he been caught under Their feeding spells? Even from here his forests looked different, twisted spurs of damage and rot even he could see so far out, and how long has he been sleeping? When was the last time he had woken up? 

The distorted curls of memory, of half dreams and heavy white eyed tar masses that would lay upon his chest in the dark of half sleep, purring their own spells of paralysis and token fear, was broken into severed strands, things remembered but not done twinging in the corners of his mind. Wilson remembered things, things he knew did not ever pass, but the squeaking whispers of Them told it as truth and They crawled into his sleep, manifested as reality dreams.

The worst part of such things was that some of it featured a happiness in him he never knew he had the capacity to feel, memories that were his and yet not flitting about and teasing him with thoughts and words he had but did not, content and joy and comfort and something else too frequent and unknown that he tried to push away. It fed Them, the feeling of slick boiled masses oozing into his brain ghosting over him with a shiver, and yet they did not take it away like they did before, left slips as if to mock him even more.

They mocked his inability to take the Throne and left him with memories and feelings he never had, thoughts of things that came to pass and yet never even raised a sallow eye towards him here.

The tremor thickened, limbs shaking as he crossed his chest, claws digging into his worn clothing. The weight of their gaze was on his shoulders, that aura of wanting, hunger and lust and starvation, and Wilson slowly pulled back and started walking, turning forward to the focus of this plane. The dark mist of it was banished by cold moon glow, enthralling presence less and yet just as terrifying as ever. 

The throb of the fatty heart below it, pulsing inhales and exhales as the ground breathed, as the Throne breathed and pumped and hummed in dizzy quakes, it made Wilson flinch away from it, thick mucus clogging his throat and the wave of nausea swirled in his gut, shivers embedded into his nerves as its heavy presence thrilled the air around it. The weight of Them was bigger, larger here, feeding oh so slowly on the hearts pumping veins, and Wilson could feel Them, feel Them in a way different from the heavy seeping of tongues that ached for his skin in the darkness of eternal night, withering ghostly sprites invading his tent and searching for him, for the thoughts and feelings and memories he still had left.

The eyes that hung in the air here were banished by moonlight yet he could see Them now, globs of putrid foam that rippled and examined his trembling form, a low mocking thrum breaching the Thrones beat for a slight instant.

A blind thing flickered in the corner of his eye, boiling sloughed form blackened with ash and shadow, its presence pushing him back from the Throne even as it vanished under his focused gaze, and Wilson could feel the sloshing in his head, thoughts melted rotten yolk in a fragile shell and he backed away, stumbling over rock and shards of cracked marble. A clawed hand rose to his forehead, squeezing his eyes shut as he held his head, shivering with something pounding unevenly in his chest, a dull jab in his throat as he swallowed thickly. 

The heated nausea burned in his belly, a spitted fade of thought ghosting in his brain for a moment, when was the last time he had eaten, but another tremor wracked up his spine with frozen hooks and scrabbling knives and he hunched forward, feeling the thickness of the air and the rot of Their gaze and the strained push and pull as each beat from the Throne sucked the life out of the planes dried husk. Its stubborn fingers dragged and ripped, the wasteland nothing more than a dusty hack of desperate air, and They watched patiently, hopelessly and yet satisfied in Their own wanting, in what They have already take away and what They had yet to take.

Wilson trembled, rode out the ring of fear and shock, his own body hissing with pain and ache, the soft dribbling of the left over dream just a fragment of molars and canines, bleach white enamel in his fingers and hair before it vanished into dusty smoke, feeling the hulking presence of Them and Their hunger as the moons sickness wavered, blue ash coating everything in a fine tongue of jagged sand. It took a moment of spiraled time, tugging patience in his hair as They passed over him, long tendrils and limbs coughing up tainted mist, but then Wilson took a deep breath of rotten air and straightened up, gaze pointedly not on the Thrones beating heart or its many eyed suitors, instead towards the cliffs.

The moon waned, blue light still up but ever so slowly faded, hissing softly as candle wax dripped down and the pond scum light guttered in anticipation. Their milken eyes would be alive again, spread and blinking encrusted lids and bruised flesh corners with a watchfulness full of nothing but sorrow and inhuman decadence, elegant partaking in the siphon in his throat and chest, the rest withered and corpse dusted in forgetfulness and waste. The shiver of the thought hurt, twinge of banded pain in his skull and a drilled ache in the middle of his back, throat swallowing roughly and full of dust specks, shards piercing and blood welled trails. The ooze of it crawled down his neck, cold slimed hands and the cream born eyes blinked with egg shell thin lids above him, mocking hiss of a whisper, mass of glopped tar and murk coating his spine and soaking his cloths in black drool as it leaned, another twisted taunt and recall as it leaned to his ear, brushing his hair back with moist breath and strung up noose whispers, tight around his throat as its mummy hands curled around his neck, the lead trail of slime flowing stickily over his chest and shoulders as it clung to him in desperate strands.

Tremors up and down, wracking his spine and hurting, hurting, hurting, and the mass behind him lessened its grasp, leaned back as he shook, claws trembling fists at his sides and eyes tight shut, and its mock cry and grief reverberated in his skull, peeling its way off of him without a touch of feeling before its presence leveled into a nothing weight. The ooze stayed, blinking open his eyes in blue light to see thick trails of blackened mess on his chest and shoulders, feeling it collect in his hair and over his back, and Wilson felt the skitter of vibration in his neck and brain, sudden jitter and disjointed rub and strained pull in his face, wavering in the stagnant air because his legs did not feel solid nor straight with mucus collecting in his mouth and throat. The world tilted, wobbled, suddenly so very silent in a wrong sense of place and word, and the vibrations intensified, focused in his skull and behind his eyes, and Wilson backed away from the Throne half heartedly, clawed hands curling around his throat for a moment in a twisted mockery of Their previous grasp, feeling the curled pull and tug from the Thrones heart as if from his own chest, palpitations heavy and stuttered and painful pulses half remembered before he froze.

A sudden moment of clarity, corrupted piercing shard of ice and Wilson yanked his claws away from his throat, already dripping with Their left over fluids and contempt, feeling the shattered calm try to piece together and rub wrong in his brain with sloughed slides of matter and thought.

He shouldn't have even come near to the Throne, to the stronger presence of other, yet his stumbling confusion of fog dream led him and the heartbeat in him felt very, very wrong, iron and lead filling his limbs and chest cavity with every breath. The hollow feeling was filling with cooled liquid metal, stuck in his throat and caressing down in thick waves, the silence unnatural and wrong when he could practically feel their eyes on him, breathing a hissing wheeze that rattled loudly in the barren silence with a strained pull in his burning gut, and the stink of the Throne and its leeches chocked him, rot and molded raw flesh permitting the stagnant air and spreading an aura of voided stillness over it.

Wilson started to stumble back, feeling rather than seeing the blue yawning of the moon fade, reaching an ending climax of light and fade shadows, before feeling his eyes focus and see the flattened plane of reality before him. His stumbling forward, sudden influx of blind, deaf thought that clung to the metal in his chest yet did not reach his mind, dusty sand ground tripping him up, and the feeling and knowledge was a thick force in his head, of Them as they watched, manifested but not following. The slick of the ground was a surprise, sudden not earth but something else, breathing deeply with a flesh heart pounding in the deeps, and Wilson breathed in moist heated air before it was stagnant again, dust bones that crawled with maggoty flesh before tearing his gaze away from the fluctuating ground and instead forward. They were behind him even as light steadily faded, globes of blighted milk following him and he knew they waited, watched, wanted, and it was one step after another, forward forward forward, and then-

A gaping maw opened up, yellowed teeth shards and blunt picks jutting out of the fleshy stone cliff face, made him tilt and pull back with sudden thrilling spikes of fear, hearing the crash of gelatin waves on stone spires and the dulled bemoaning fate of the broken rod deep below the surface. His breaths were drugged, heavy things rattling and pinching in his chest, light headed and blinking back something that gathered in his eyes. Everything felt rugged, peeled and jostled into strips and pieces that were laid out in a dried mat and leveled before him, and something was awfully wrong as the light flickered around him and seemed to pull into hunks of waxen melts, hung oddly in the sky even as they faded into dark voids of nothing, black and white checker boarding flying high above him.

There was a step forward, just there, yet the frozen tilt of the world held him for a moment, deep engrained fear and panic and something else finally, finally rising to the surface, breaking the shelled bubble around his skull, and the hysteria and complete terror broke open from a thick nightmare membrane and the sudden twisted vibrations raged and he was shaking terribly, arms curling over his chest and claws digging into his own skin, seeing nothing out over the liquid myth sea, blackened thick slime and mold scaling the sheer rocks. He couldn’t think clearly, just noisy babble in his head from sources of dream and memory and fake reality, the whispers of Them all but silenced and waiting, waiting for him, for him to do something to do nothing to do everything it was a build up and climax and he wobbled and shivered and his head hurt with corrupted towers of rock and stone and black slime nooses snug against his throat spines of clawed tendrils wrapping over his shoulders and milk white eyes bright and wide around him in the sudden all encompassing darkened void abyss of Them and the open gate below him to the bubbled depths of something much much bigger with too many eyes that rose up and up and up and-

And then it was silent.


End file.
